The Touch

by F. Paul Wilson

  Sylvia wanted to get away from the subject of politicians and onto the subject of Alan. She’d known him all these years and had never had a chance to ask him about himself. Now that she had him all to herself, she wanted to make the most of the opportunity.

  She put her hand on his arm and felt him flinch. Did she make him that nervous? Her heart stumbled over a beat. Could he possibly feel…? No, that would be too much to ask.

  “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask you how come you aren’t a pediatrician? You have a way with kids.”

  “For the same reason I didn’t specialize in any other area: I need variety. In my practice I can see a five-day-old infant with colic and a hundred-and-two-year-old man with prostate trouble back-to-back. Keeps me on my toes. But as for pediatrics, I had a more specific reason for not going into that. I rotated through the peds ward in my senior year of medical school and that cured me of a career in that field.” A look of pain passed over his face. “Too many terminally ill kids. A few years of that and I knew I’d be an emotional basket case. And anyway, with the type of training I had, it was hard to go into anything but family practice.”

  Sylvia leaned forward with her elbows on the banister. She loved listening to him, hearing about a side of him that was otherwise hidden from her. “How’s that?”

  “Well, my medical school had this philosophy of teaching you all about every organ in the body but never letting you forget that it was part of a person. They always stressed the old cliché of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. We were never supposed to treat John Doe’s heart disease—we were always to treat John Doe who happened to have heart disease.”

  “Sounds like semantics.”

  “Yeah. I thought it was a word game, too. But there’s a world of difference when you put the two approaches into practice. But getting back to pediatrics, I’ve come to see that sometimes I can practice better office pediatrics as a family doctor than as a pediatrician.”

  Sylvia laughed. She knew a few pediatricians who might take issue with that.

  “I’m serious. Best example I can think of is a nine-year-old girl in a few months ago with stomach pains, weight loss, and sinking grades in school. If I were a pediatrician I’d start ordering a battery of blood tests, and when they came out negative, maybe even some barium X-ray studies. But I didn’t.”

  “Flying by the seat of your pants again?” she said, remembering Tuesday night and Jeffy’s bellyache.

  “Not at all. Because over the past year I’d seen the mother three times for sprains, bruises, and contusions. Each time she’d say she’d fallen, but I know what it looks like when someone gets punched in the nose. I confronted her and she admitted that her husband had been getting physically abusive over the past year; I got them into family counseling, and when I last saw the girl her stomachaches were gone, she’d regained her lost weight, and was performing back up to par in school.”

  “And you don’t think a pediatrician could do that?”

  “Of course. I’m not saying I’m a better pediatrician per se. I’m saying that because I treat whole families, I have a more direct line into what’s going on in the home, which allows me a perspective no specialist has.”

  Sylvia saw Virginia Bulmer and Charles stroll into view below and noted with a flash of satisfaction the relieved expressions on both their faces when they looked up and saw Alan and her standing in plain sight.

  Lou Alberts, her uncle and Alan’s old partner, came out to make it a threesome.

  Alan apparently saw them, too.

  “I should let you get back to your guests.”

  Was that a note of reluctance in his voice?

  “If you must,” she said, looking him in the eyes.

  Alan offered her his arm.

  She sighed and allowed him to lead her down. It really was time to get back to the party—Switzer and Cunningham would be bumping into each other soon and she didn’t want to miss that.

  Mike Switzer came up and grabbed Alan’s arm as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Alan!” he said, all smiles. “You did it!”

  “What? Did what?” Alan said.

  Sylvia smiled, gave his arm a squeeze, and drifted away.

  “The Guidelines bill! It’s gone back to committee!”

  “Is that good?”

  “Hell, yes! It means it won’t get tacked onto the Medicare appropriations, which puts it in limbo for a while.”

  Alan’s rising spirits dipped. “So it’s still alive.”

  “Yes, but it’s wounded. And nowadays that’s the best we can hope for.” He slapped Alan on the back. “And you helped wound it, buddy!”

  “The pleasure was all mine.”

  “Great! Just don’t run against me in my district.”

  “Never fear,” Alan said with heartfelt sincerity. “If I never see one of those committee rooms again it will be too soon.”

  “That’s what I like to hear!” Switzer suddenly sobered. “But be alert for any of the senator’s aides who may come around and say they want to ‘get you on the team’ where they can have ‘easy access to your valuable insight.’ They’ll offer positions on things like study groups and the like. Ignore them.”

  “Why? Not that I have time for that kind of thing—but why ignore them?”

  “It’s an old trick,” Mike said in an exaggerated conspiratorial whisper from the corner of his mouth. “You get your most articulate critics off guard by appearing open to their ideas, then you lose them in your study groups, sub-subcommittees, brain trusts, et cetera. You muffle them by burying them under tons of paper and red tape.”

  “Nice town you work in.”

  Mike shrugged. “If you know the rules, you can play the game.”

  “When it starts worming its way into my examining rooms,” Alan said, “it’s not a game anymore.”

  As Congressman Switzer drifted off to press flesh with other guests, Axford strolled by and stopped at Alan’s side.

  “So what field are you in?” Alan asked.

  It was small talk, and then again it wasn’t: Alan was curious as to what sort of man interested Sylvia.

  “Research. Neurology.”

  “One of the schools? Pharmaceutical company?”

  Axford shook his head. “Private. The McCready Foundation.”

  “Oh, God!”

  Axford smiled. “Now don’t get your knickers in a twist.”

  Alan couldn’t help the sour look on his face. “But McCready…Christ! Wasn’t it his kind that drove most of the good doctors out of England?”

  Axford shrugged. “The famous ‘Brain Drain’? I don’t know and don’t bloody much care. National Health was already on the scene when I entered medical school. I just go where the research dollars are.”

  Alan felt an almost instinctive hostility rise in him. “So you come from a tradition of doctors as government employees. Must make it easy for you to work for McCready. Ever meet him?”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “His Circle of Willis is clogged with fecaliths.”

  Alan burst out laughing. Axford was anything but charming, but his candor was endearing. So was his wit. Alan had never heard anyone called a shithead in such an oblique manner.

  Axford gave him an appraising look. “Do I detect a note of hostility toward academic medicine?”

  “No more than the average clinician.”

  “And I suppose you think you can get along just ducky without the research physician and the academician?”

  “They have their places, but when a guy who hasn’t laid a finger on a living patient since 1960 condescends to tell me how to practice clinical medicine—”

  “You mean you actually touch people?” Axford said with an exaggerated grimace of distaste.

  Lou Albert was passing by then and Axford caught him by the elbow.

  “I say, why don’t we three doctor-types stand around and talk shop, what? I unders
tand you two were partners once upon a time. Is that so?”

  Sylvia’s uncle looked decidedly unhappy, but he stopped and nodded. He was shorter than either Alan or Axford, and at least a decade older, but he stood tall as always with his military-straight spine and gray, crew-cut hair.

  “You know damn well that’s so. You asked me about it an hour ago.”

  “That’s right, that’s right. I did, didn’t I?” Alan saw a gleam begin to glow in Axford’s eyes. His smile became vulpine. “Years ago, wasn’t it? And didn’t you tell me that Alan here stole a lot of patients from you?”

  Lou’s face reddened. “I said no such thing!”

  “Oh, do come along, old fellow. I asked you how many patients he stole from you and you said…?” Axford’s voice curved up at the end like the barb on a hook.

  “I said ‘a few,’ that’s all.”

  Alan couldn’t fathom what Axford was after, but he knew he was up to no good. Still, he found himself unable to keep silent.

  “‘Stole,’ Lou?” Alan heard himself saying. “Since when do patients belong to anybody? I haven’t seen any yet that came with your Social Security number stenciled on them.”

  “They wouldn’t be going to you now if you hadn’t had your secretary call them all up and tell them where your new office was.”

  I don’t believe I’m getting sucked into this! Alan thought as he glared at the contentedly smiling Axford.

  “Look, Lou,” he said. “Why don’t we drop it for now. I’ll just say that the only reason I had my secretary call all those patients was because the few who found me on their own said your office told them I’d left town.”

  “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Axford said in a mock-conciliatory tone. “It wounds me to see two primary-care physicians, two foot soldiers on the bloody frontlines of medicine, bickering so! I—”

  “I’ve had just about enough of this!” Lou said. “My niece’s taste in friends is equal to her taste in doctors!” He stormed off.

  “Really, old boy,” Axford said, turning to Alan. “What did break you two up?”

  Alan was about to suggest a dark place where Axford could store his curiosity when Ginny and Sylvia walked up. Alan thought the presence of the women might blunt Axford’s goading, but it only seemed to spur him on.

  “I mean, was one of you using too much B-12? Not shooting enough penicillin? Tell me: Doesn’t general medicine get bloody boring, what with all those endless sore throats?”

  “At times,” Alan said, keeping cool and pretending to take Axford very seriously. “Beats abusing white rats for a living, though.”

  Axford’s eyebrows rose halfway to his hairline. “Does it now? And how many colds have you treated this week? How many stomach viruses? How many hangnails? How many boils and carbuncles?”

  “Careful, Charlie,” Sylvia said somewhere to the right of Alan’s shoulder. Alan couldn’t see her. His face was no more than a foot from Axford’s and their eyes were locked. “You’re getting yourself too exercised.”

  “None,” was all Alan said.

  Axford’s face parodied shock. “None? Pray tell, then, old sock, what do you treat?”

  “People.”

  Alan heard Ginny clap and laugh and Sylvia say, “Touché, Chucko! A ten-pointer!”

  Axford’s third-degree interrogator’s expression wavered, then broke into a rueful smile. “How did I let myself get maneuvered into that old saw?” He looked at Sylvia. “But ten points is a bit much, though, wouldn’t you say? After all, I gave him all those openings, unintentional though they might have been.”

  Sylvia wouldn’t budge. “Ten.”

  What’s going on here? Alan felt like a species of game fish that had spit a hook. He was about to say something when angry shouting arose in the living room. They hurried in as a group to find the cause.

  Had to happen, Alan said to himself.

  From his vantage point behind a couch he saw florid, overweight Andrew Cunningham of the MTA squared off against dapper Congressman Switzer in the center of the room. Cunningham had evidently had too much to drink, as evidenced by his unsteady stance. Alan and the rest of the New York Metropolitan area had been watching the two swap accusations and insults via the TV and the newspapers for the past three or four months. The situation had escalated from the political to the personal with Switzer painting Cunningham as the ringleader of the most graft-ridden, featherbedded transportation system in the country, and Cunningham calling the congressman a headline-grabbing traitor to the district that elected him. As far as Alan could tell, neither was completely wrong.

  With Alan and most of the other guests watching, Cunningham roared something unintelligible and threw his drink in Switzer’s face. The congressman went livid. He grabbed the MTA chief by the lapels and swung him around. They pushed and shoved this way and that across the room like a couple of barroom brawlers while the rest of the guests either called for them to stop or shouted encouragement to one or the other.

  Alan saw Ba standing off to the side in a corner of the room. But he was not watching the fight; instead, his eyes were fixed somewhere to Alan’s left. Alan looked and there stood Sylvia. He’d expected to see a look of dismay on her face, but he was wrong. She stood on tiptoes, her eyes bright, a tight smile on her face as she pulled short, quick breaths between her slightly parted lips.

  She’s enjoying this!

  What was it with her? And what with him? He should have been repulsed by the pleasure she took from these two grown men, two public figures, making fools of themselves. Instead, it drew him more strongly to her. He thought he knew himself, but where this woman was concerned…everything was new and strange.

  Alan turned back to the struggle in time to see Cunningham lose his grip and stumble backward toward the fireplace. His heel caught the lip of the outer hearth and he lost his balance. As his arms flailed helplessly in the air, the back of his head struck the corner of the marble mantelpiece. He went down in a heap.

  Alan leaped over the couch, but was not the first to reach the fallen man. Ba was already there, crouched over the bulky, unconscious form.

  “He’s bleeding!” Alan said as he saw the characteristic red spray of an arterial pumper along the white marble of the mantelpiece. Probably a scalp artery. A small puddle had pooled around the back of Cunningham’s head and was spreading rapidly.

  The room, filled a moment ago with shouting and catcalls, had gone deathly still.

  Without being told, Ba lifted the head and rolled the man onto his side so Alan could inspect the wound. Alan immediately spotted the jagged two-inch gash in the lower right occipital area. Wishing he carried a handkerchief, he pressed his bare hand over the wound, applying pressure. Warm blood filled his palm as he tried to press the slick, ragged edges closed with his fingers.

  It happened then: The tingling ecstasy and euphoria started where his hand covered the wound, darting up his arm, then spreading throughout his body. He shuddered. Cunningham shuddered with him as his eyes fluttered open.

  Alan took his hand away and looked. Terror, wonder, and disbelief mingled furiously within him when he saw the scalp. The wound had closed; only a shallow, irregular scratch remained.

  Ba leaned over and looked at the wound. Abruptly he released Cunningham and shot to his feet. For a moment, as Ba towered over Alan, the giant seemed to sway, as if he were dizzy. Alan saw shock and amazement in his wide dark eyes…and something else: Alan couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw recognition there. Then Ba turned to the people crowding nearer.

  “Please, back! Please, back!”

  Sylvia came forward and crouched beside Alan. The tight smile was gone, replaced by a mask of genuine concern. Axford was behind her but remained standing, aloof but watchful.

  “Is he all right?”

  Alan couldn’t answer. He knew he must look silly, kneeling here with his mouth hanging open and a puddle of another man’s blood clotting in his palm, but he couldn’t speak just yet. All he could do was s
tare at the back of Cunningham’s head.

  “Of course I’m all right!” Cunningham said and sat up. He didn’t appear the slightest bit groggy. All signs of inebriation were gone.

  “But the blood!” She looked at Alan’s hand.

  “Scalp wounds bleed like crazy—even little ones,” Alan managed to say, then he looked pointedly at Axford. “Right?”

  He watched the Brit’s eyes travel over the red spray along the mantelpiece and wall, to the puddle on the floor.

  Axford hesitated, then shrugged. “Right. Bloody right.”

  The party was in its final spasms and Ba was glad. He did not like so many strangers in the house. For the Missus it had no doubt been just another party, but for Ba it had been a revelation.

  Dat-tay-vao.

  As he stood at the front door and watched the Doctor’s car cruise toward the street, the phrase reverberated through his mind, echoing endlessly.

  Dat-tay-vao.

  Dr. Bulmer possessed it.

  But how? It was not possible!

  Yet he could not deny what he had seen tonight: the gout of blood, the open wound—stopped and closed at the Doctor’s touch. He had felt his knees go weak and rubbery at the sight.

  How long had the Dat-tay-vao been with him?

  Surely not long, for Ba had seen the surprise on the Doctor’s face when the wound had healed under his hand. If only…

  Ba’s mind leaped back over the years to the time when his dear Nhung Thi was wasting away from the cancer that had started in her lungs and spread throughout her body. He remembered how Dr. Bulmer had returned again and again to her side during the endless torment, the year-long days, the epochal months as she was devoured from within. There had been many doctors treating Nhung Thi in those days, but for Ba and his wife, Dr. Bulmer had come to be The Doctor.

  If only he had possessed the Dat-tay-vao then.

  But of course he hadn’t. He had been an ordinary physician then. But now…Ba felt a pang in his heart for the Doctor, because all the tales about the Dat-tay-vao hinted that there was a balance to be struck. Always a balance…

  And a price to be paid.